


in the light

by raspberrylimonade



Series: Never Left My Mind verse [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Minor Jason Grace/Piper McLean, Past Jason Grace/Piper McLean, jason is alive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 15:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15122852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberrylimonade/pseuds/raspberrylimonade
Summary: Jason and Leo talk about their individual choices to sacrifice themselves.





	in the light

On his fifth day after waking up from death, Jason snuck out of the infirmary. If he spent another day simply lying around, he would have died of boredom.

Initially, the medics had allowed him to receive visitors, one person at a time. However, those already very strict visitor hours had been removed completely after Nico di Angelo shadow-travelled straight into his ward one night, very nearly giving Jason a heart attack.

There was also the part where he was still in his coffin, because everyone was too afraid of lifting him out, least they aggravate his condition. Even with the lid removed, Jason felt like a vampire each night as he fell asleep.

He was sure he looked like one. He had not been allowed to move around much, but he could lift his arms. His skin was a plastery white, and his veins blue. Maybe that was why the blinds on the nearest window were permanently drawn, so he would not crumble to dust in the sunlight.

His chest ached with each move he made. His breathing was still ragged. Walking made him dizzy, his body not used to being upright after almost a year of disuse.

The only reason he had made it out of the infirmary was because of Leo.

The boy was sneaking in through the back door of the medical building just as Jason was sneaking out. Jason promptly collapsed into his arms. Normally, he would have just crushed Leo, but Jason had lost so much weight that Leo was able to drag him outside and onto Festus.

They landed on a hill on the outskirts of New Rome. They turned their backs on the city, facing the forested hills instead. The sun was setting, so the trees casted long shadows under the dusky rose sky.

For a while, they simply sat in silence. Leo pulled a pad of Post-its and some elastics from his tool belt and started folding paper planes for Festus to incinerate in mid-air. The wings of the planes fluttered, carrying them further than normal origami could. The scene reminded Jason of when they first met, when Leo flew his handmade helicopter over the Grand Canyon. That now felt like an eternity ago.

Leo threw another plane, and Jason tried to summoning the winds to make carry it a little higher. Nothing. It was as if he was out of touch with the air, no longer able to make it respond to him. Perhaps being murdered had made him _normal._

His must have had a strained expression on his face, because Leo turned to him and asked, “You feeling okay?”

“I’ve been better,” Jason admitted hoarsely.

Leo was silent, probably refraining from pointing out how painfully (for lack of a better word) obvious the statement was.

Festus creaked, waiting for another paper plane. When he realised no more were coming, he bounded done the hill, disappearing between the trees.

Suddenly, Leo huffed and shifted next to Jason, as if making to hug him. He had an arm hovering over Jason’s back when he stopped himself.

“Man, I haven’t seen you in like, forever,” he breathed. His arms dropped to his sides. “I want to hug you.”

Jason couldn’t help but chuckle lightly, even though it made his chest ache.

He had imagined countless things to do when he found Leo again. Hug him. Punch him. Tackle him to the ground and cry. Maybe judo flip him, the way Annabeth had done with Percy.

Leo grinned when Jason mentioned the last one. “As long as you kiss me first,” he said, and puckered his lips.

Seeing his friend joke around, with his wide, toothed grin and eyes sparkling with mischief, Jason was overcome with a wave of nostalgia. He had thought he would never witness Leo’s light and humour again. Hell, he could barely believe Leo was sitting next to him right now, in the flesh.

“I thought I’d lost you.”

His voice was a near whisper as he told Leo about the survivor’s guilt. How it ate at him every night when he lay in bed reliving their last moments together again and again, wondering what he could have done differently.

“And then the sybil told me…”

He paused to take a deep breath. Just thinking of his encounter in the burning room, and Herophile’s defeated voice as she spoke to him, made him shudder.

“I couldn’t let it happen again,” he finished. “I couldn’t let anyone else die for me.”

Leo patted Jason’s knee. “Hey man, what happened with Gaea and the giants, it had to be me, okay?”

“But the prophecy - ”

“‘Storm or fire’, I know,” Leo said. He held up his hands to cut off Jason’s protest. “So you or me, right? Then, when some of us had to free Nike, she told those of us who were there that one of us wouldn’t make it. That eliminated you.”

Jason’s brows furrowed as he looked Leo up and down. His brain was trying to wrap itself around this new piece of information. It had been, what - a year? Two? - since they defeated Gaea in the skies above Camp Half-Blood. He couldn’t imagine how Leo must have felt, basically finding out that he was destined to die. At least Jason had been given a choice - him or Piper - not that it had been much of a choice. Memories slowly crept in, nights lying in his dorm bed, wondering whether it would be easier or harder if the sybil had just told him he - and he alone - was doomed.

“Shit, Leo,” was all he managed to say.

He bit his tongue before he could ask, _why didn’t you tell us?_ He had not been forthcoming with the knowledge of his impending demise either.

“Yeah, well,” Leo went on. “I had a plan. I had the physician’s cure. What happened to you...Jason, that could have been permanent.”

Jason subconsciously placed his hand over his chest. He could feel the ridges of the scarred tissue under his T-shirt. His flesh felt sore and tender, even with the light pressure of his palm.

There were smaller scars all over his body - puncture wounds where he had been hit with arrows. He also had a couple of slashes on his side where the emperor’s spear had sliced at his skin, and some smaller cuts from the metal shards in Medea’s wind prison. The legion’s medics and even a doctor who worked in New Rome had given him all sorts of treatments, but so far only the wounds inflicted by Medea were fading. Maybe almost dying had taken away his healing capabilities along with his powers. Maybe Jason the demigod son of Jupiter had died, and all that was left was Jason, the completely normal human.

Maybe it was permanent, in the sense that it would affect him forever.

But then he blinked, and his hand was on Piper’s chest instead, caught between trying to put pressure on her wound and feeling for a heartbeat.

He blinked again, and the world shifted. He was lying on the hillside, miraculously alive, with one of his best friends, who was also miraculously alive. The setting sun painted the scene in warm gold.

Jason inhaled deeply. “It was worth it.”

Leo raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything else. His eyes drifted downwards and fixed on Jason’s oldest scar - the one on his lip. He stared at it for so long that Jason might have gotten self-conscious on a regular day, but now he was merely curious why, of all his other scars now, Leo took an interest in that.

The sound of a horn stoles his attention before he could dwell too much on it. Leo straightened and looked over his shoulder in the direction of camp. Then he turned back to Jason and stuck out his hand. “You up for dinner?”

Jason shrugged. He had been having all his meals in bed (if one counted a deathbed as a bed) in the dark, enclosed hospital ward. They told him eating was vital for regaining his strength, here, out in the open, with the sun beating down on his face, Jason felt truly alive for the first time since regaining consciousness.

He leaned back and slowly lowered himself onto the grass.

“Let them find me,” he decided. “I want to stay here for a while.”


End file.
